Mechanical devices are frequently designed using finite element analysis (“FEA”) packages. For example, a FEA package may be used to model a hood of an automobile by generating a mesh that covers a piece of sheet metal. The FEA package then incrementally determines the deflection of each element of the mesh based on certain boundary conditions until the resulting shape of the entire mesh can be graphically depicted. The accuracy of the model generated by the FEA package is important because the results from the model are used in the actual manufacturing process. For example, if the model is not accurate, then the actual device manufactured based on the model may not end up with the desired shape.
The accuracy of a model generated by an FEA package may be increased by increasing the number of elements that form a particular mesh used in the modeling process. But the increase of elements also increases the required computation time because a non-linear FEA involves repeated computation of many equations that are associated with each element of a mesh. Supercomputers are used to accelerate the computation time of these models, but even such powerful computers may take days before a model is completed with the required accuracy.